Since the New Deal, Republicans have been on the wrong side of every issue of concern
to ordinary Americans; Social Security, the war in Vietnam, equal rights,
civil liberties, church- state separation, consumer issues, public education, reproductive
freedom, national health care, labor issues, gun policy, campaign-finance
reform, the environment
and tax fairness. No political party could
remain so consistently wrong by accident.
The only rational conclusion is
that, despite their cynical "family values" propaganda, the Republican Party
is a criminal conspiracy to betray the interests of the American people
in
favor of plutocratic and corporate interests, and absolutist religious groups.

news with the election-year smear
of Kerry's Vietnam War record. Apparently, O'Neill's willingness to
lie and love of media notoriety hasn't abated since the Nixon years.
O'Neill
(along with Freeper wingnut Jerry Corsi) is the author of the hit piece "Unfit for Command" and is the front man for the
so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth propaganda campaign. MORE

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Bob Novak? Sissy boy.
Richard Perle? Wussy.
My Switch Vote Veterans
smear will ensure that
I rightfully be acclaimed as the one and only
true "Prince of Darkness."

Mythology versus Reality:
Re-Fighting the Vietnam War
The controversy over the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear against John
Kerry's record during the Vietnam war proves two things. First, the history of
the Vietnam War seems to have been forgotten or ignored by a large percentage
of the American people. Second, the Republicans will stoop to any depth of despicable
sleazery to win another four years for the presi-
dency of George
W. Bush.

Santyana wrote that those who ignore the lessons of history
are doomed to repeat it. As can be demonstrated by the current US debacle in Iraq,
the neocon geniuses in the Bush administra-
tion have obviously ignored
those lessons.

For the true history of US involve-
ment in
Vietnam -- as opposed to the mythology created after the fact (more on that later)
-- the parallels with Iraq are obvious. Both wars were sold under false pretenses.
In Vietnam it was the bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident. For Iraq, it was the
bogus charge of the threat of Iraqi WMDs.

American involvement
in Vietnam was based on real Cold War geo-
political rivalry with the
Soviets
and Chinese and the fear of the Domino Effect. By contrast,
the Iraq war seems to have been sparked by a desire to control Iraqi oil, and
worse, for purely domestic political advantage to be exploited by Bush and the
Republican Party.

For those too young to have experienced the national
trauma self-inflicted by US involvement in Vietnam, and for those old enough
to remember but who prefer the mythology, the facts are cold, hard and inescapable.
The government of the United States attempted to impose its imperial will
on the people of Vietnam. This was undertaken through the assassin-
ation
of South Vietnam President Diem, the installation of an accom-
modating
puppet government, and the occupation of 500,000 American troops.

President
Lyndon Johnson
let himself be convinced by the
CIA and
Pentagon that massive
US force could defeat the North Vietnamese militarily
on their own turf, but later realized the enormity of his mistake and declined
to run for a second term. By 1968, with hundreds of American soldiers
killed every week, American public opinion had begun to sour on the war. The
Democratic Party, already fractured by the war, was crippled by their disastrous
1968 convention in Chicago. Richard Nixon was elected based on his "secret plan"
to end the conflict ("peace with honor") but ultimately escalated
the
war to involve Cambodia, and dropped more bombs on North Vietnam than were dropped
on Germany and Japan combined during WWII.

Nixon's imperial hubris
extended the war for another four years -- with over 58,000 Americans and
millions of Vietnamese killed -- and provoked greater domestic political division
than at any time since
the Civil War.

Against the backdrop
of American international political isolation and widespread anti-war protests
and their frequently violent suppression by authorities, a young Vietnam combat
vet named John Kerry came forward. As one of the most articulate spokesmen of
one of the most credible anti-war activist groups, the Vietnam Veterans Against
the War, young John Kerry courageously denounced the war with eloquence and conviction
based on his own first-hand experiences.

Ultimately, the vast
majority of Americans came to agree with Kerry's assessment. Forced by that
new political reality, Nixon began the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam under
the smoke-
screen of "Vietnamization" (i.e.,
the training and equipping
of
South Vietnamese forces). Victory was declared and we got the hell
out.

That the North Vietnamese were later able to roll into
Saigon virtually unopposed proved the folly of American policy as well as the
total lack of support by the South Viet-
namese people for their puppet
government.

After the triumph of the North Vietnamese, the mythology
of our involvement in Vietnam began to germinate. Rather than being an overtly
imperial war with a US-
installed puppet government as a client, the
war became a fight to preserve democracy in South Vietnam. Rather than a military
that inflicted indiscriminate carnage on unarmed civilians, our forces
were all heroic defenders of liberty against the Communist menace. Rather than
ordering massive waves of devastating carpet bombing of North Vietnam, our military's
"hands were tied" by politicians that prohibited the use
of nuclear
weapons. Rather than being worn down by an implacable and resourceful enemy,
the "defeat" of America was the result of the actions of countless American
peacenik traitors in general, and 22-year-old actress Jane Fonda in particular.

Mythologizing a military defeat is nothing new. After WWI, German
nationalists had to rationalize their loss as the result of a "stab in the
back" by Jews and Communists. It is this same type of mythology that motivates
the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Another aspect of the
Vietnam mythology is that anti-war activists condemned US soldiers sent to fight
in that war. "They spit on me at the airport and called me a baby killer," is
the script often recited by archetypal Vietnam War veterans that (due either
to their preference for the myth over the reality or

because they were simply too dumb to understand the historical currents swirling
around them) supported US actions there.

This myth has been thoroughly debunked in the book "The Spitting Image." The anti-war movement never criticized the soldiers who fought in
Vietnam, only the government that sent them there.

When the young John
Kerry addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, he told the
truth (click here for full transcript). In his noble and coura-
geous attempt to end that divisive war, Kerry did
not,
as the Bush campaign and the Swift Vote Veterans allege, condemn
the soldiers who served in Vietnam. He simply reported the facts on the ground
and urged the Senate to end the unnecessary bloodshed.

It is also
a fact that by the end of US involvement in Vietnam, the vast majority of Americans
realized the war was a mistake and there was virtually no support for continuing
the slaughter. In 1977, when President Carter pardoned all Vietnam-era
draft dodgers as one
of his first acts in office, it precipitated little
or no controversy. Memories were fresh then, and the mythology had not yet begun
to corrupt the national consciousness.

America suffered no adverse
national security effects from the fall of South Vietnam. American involvement
in Vietnam was a total waste of lives, limbs and wounded psyches. The lessons
that should have been learned were: 1) That nationalism always trumps imperialism.
2) American military force should only be used in critical instances of real
and imminent threat to our national security. 3) If the decision to unleash
America's awesomely lethal military power is contro-
versial enough for serious
debate, options other than war should be pursued.

These are apparently
lessons lost on George W.
Bush, the radical neocon architects of
the Iraq war,
and those who support Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In Iraq as during the Vietnam War, the most important way for Americans to
"support the troops" should be obvious: Don't let our leaders waste American soldiers'
lives in unnecessary wars.

Which brings us back to the so-called
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the hit piece, "Unfit for Command" by John
O'Neill and Jerry Corsi. Even a cursory examination of their smears against
John Kerry's military service should prove to all but the most credulous
that their claims are ridiculously false. Their slanders conflict with the official Navy record and the corroboration of Kerry's heroics by the men that were actually with him in Vietnam. To top it all off, O'Neill
and the SBVFT are even advancing the claim that Kerry lied in his Senate testimony
-- arguing that there were no atrocities or war crimes committed by American
armed forces in Vietnam. This proves how divorced from reality they
are, or their willingness to lie to support George W. Bush, or both.

Ironically,
considering the ambiguous (at best) military record of their hero, how many 50-something male (and their children and grandchildren) Bush supporters
are alive today because of the actions of anti-war activists like John Kerry
to end that unnecessary war?

There should be no doubt that the SBVFT smear campaign is a creature manufactured by the Bush/Rove propaganda
machine. Republican spin doctors erupt in feigned outrage at the mere suggestion,
but it's obvious. These guys have a track record (the trashing of John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina presidential primary).
Who else could be sleazy enough or desperate enough to mount a smear of this
putrescent magnitude? Who else has so little regard for truth and such
contempt for the electorate?

Since Bush has only a dismal record on Afghanistan, Iraq, jobs, the deficit, the environment, on education,
on
health care and on foreign policy -- and to reveal
his true agenda for his
second term would repulse the electorate -- smears, lies and distortions are his only available strategy for re-election.

It's not just the courage
and idealism that John Kerry demonstrated by volunteering to fight in Vietnam
that proves his fitness for the presidency. Contrary to the lies of the SBVFT
and those who blindly prefer the mythology over the reality of the Vietnam
War, it was Kerry's principled efforts to end that war that proves
he is,
by far, the better man to lead this nation.